


breathe on me

by amortentialarry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, Miscarriage, abuse is mentioned but not depicted, conversation gets unnecessarily deep, gender swap? kind of? i change harry's name to heather, i put the relationship as harry and louis but, idk what to call that, suicide and eating disorder are implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 10:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6952483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amortentialarry/pseuds/amortentialarry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>her hair was soft brown, falling over her shoulders in a cascade of ringlets. she had pink lips and deep dimples when she flashed her white teeth in a sly smile. she was tall and slender, graceful even in stillness. her voice was low and husky, and her eyes were the purest green he had ever seen.</p><p>heather was a photographer. the first time they met, she told louis all about looking at the world through light and shadow. nothing was made completely of light, nothing was made completely of shadow. just like people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breathe on me

**Author's Note:**

> this is something i wrote a while back. i didn't really write this as a larry fic, but i did use harry and louis as inspirations for the names. i ended up writing the character inspired by harry as a girl named heather, but louis pretty much is himself. 
> 
> just a late night drabble from i don't remember when. as usual, i use my favorite boys to voice some thoughts. i hope you enjoy :) - h

her hair was soft brown, falling over her shoulders in a cascade of ringlets. she had pink lips and deep dimples when she flashed her white teeth in a sly smile. she was tall and slender, graceful even in stillness. her voice was low and husky, and her eyes were the purest green he had ever seen.

heather was a photographer. the first time they met, she told louis all about looking at the world through light and shadow. nothing was made completely of light, nothing was made completely of shadow. just like people.

louis was mostly shadow when he met her. he was failing out of university courses. his girlfriend had just left him for a guy she'd been cheating with for months. his parents were getting a messy divorce, his little sisters caught in the middle. not to mention the discontinuation of his favorite pokémon game. his friend, liam, had suggested that he meet heather.

"for a change in atmosphere," he'd said.

so louis had went and met heather. she had been standing with her back to him in a large photo studio, silver necklaces dripping onto her white t-shirt, a camera dangling from the manicured tips of a ring-laden hand, her brown boots tapping on the cracked concrete floor as she danced to an indie song that liam had recently played for louis.

heather had turned to look at him when she heard him come in, her impossibly green eyes fixing on him as her mouth spread into a lopsided smile. "you must be louis."

he had nodded. "yeah. you must be heather."

the sly smile had played on her lips as she nodded. "correct. liam told me you needed to get away."

"kind of."

heather had asked no further questions, instead taking him to a local park for a photoshoot. she pulled out a few rolls of film and snapped photos. "you're exactly what i needed," she'd said, directing him into different poses.

to this day, louis still thinks she stole his line.

they continued to meet up whenever louis needed a breather from university, which was often. they would grab coffee, lounge on her sofa, or just go and drive around the city, windows down, music up, letting the rushing wind steal their screams of life.

as they lay under a tree one breezy april afternoon, louis asked, "how can you be so carefree? i love sharing the feeling with you, but when you're gone…"

heather didn't answer his question right away, raising one tattooed arm to the sky. since they'd met, she'd inked an entire arm. she'd explained none of the images etched into her creamy skin. not the anchor, not the rose, not the ship. nothing.

"the sky is so blue today," she said, letting her arm fall back to the grass. "it makes the clouds whiter than usual." she turned to look at louis. "the sky is so big, and we are so small. it's been here since the start of time and it'll be here until the end. but us? who knows if we're even supposed to be here. we might be just a blip in the system. nobody will pay attention to us for long. but people will look at the sky forever. a thousand years from now, someone will lie in the grass and just stare at the sky and admire it. they might not even know who cleopatra was! but they'll know this sky, the same one we're looking at right now. hell, they might even write poems and songs about its beauty, compare the eyes of someone they love to its blue."

her green eyes met his blue eyes, and they stared at each other instead of the sky. 

after that, louis bought her a silver necklace with a jade pendant, just because, and she cried when he gave it to her the next time they met.

"why? why would you get this for me?" she asked, and he pulled her close to him.

"people might admire the sky forever, but they'll never be able to make it feel loved," he whispered.

she threw her arms around louis and cried into his shoulder, her collarbones and necklaces pressing against his chest. her arms were alarmingly thin.

"heather," he asked quietly when she had stopped crying. "are you alright?"

she let out a shaky breath. "no," she whispered into his neck, her tears wet on his skin.

if he'd known that, a week later, she'd be dead, he would have asked her why.

it was liam who found her note. it was written in blue pen on a sheet of notebook paper, addressed to louis.

_ dear louis, _

_ i'm sorry. i'm so, so sorry. _

_ but you have to understand. if i didn't do this, he would have killed me inside, and i'd be even less than i am now. i couldn't bear the thought of living as less. _

_ i love you. as long as there are people to look at the sky, i will love you. _

_ whenever you look up, just know i'll be smiling back at you. _

_ heather  _

he hadn't known. he hadn't known that she had a boyfriend. he hadn't known that she was abused and that he forced her to do things nobody should be forced to do. he hadn't known she'd gotten pregnant and then depressed. he hadn't known she'd stopped eating, and that she'd gotten so malnourished her body passed the baby because it knew it couldn't keep them both alive. 

he hadn't known. and all he knew now was the note in his hand and the silver necklace with the jade pendant it had been taped to.

after her funeral, he walked out and looked up at the sky. all the tears he had kept inside poured out. he wrapped his fingers around the little pendant, which he kept with him at all times. 

he missed heather.

he didn't write a song about the sky, although he knew, somewhere, sometime, someone had. he wrote songs about green eyes and sly smiles and brown curls and love that had never known life. the songs never went anywhere outside his notebook

he went back to school. he worked hard, throwing himself into his work. it felt good to do something, to distract himself.

a week later, he received a thick envelope in the mail.

he opened it up, and out tumbled a stack of photographs. they were of the day in the park, ages ago. their first day.

he thought he'd seen all the photos before, but there was one that he didn't recognize. he realized, with a start, that it was heather. he'd never seen a photo of her; she was always the one taking photos.

she was stunning. she was wearing a bright blue sundress, her curls stuffed under a beige hat, a bright laugh on her face. the necklaces and tattoos were absent. it was just heather, standing in the same park, looking like sunshine.

he turned the photo over, hoping there would be a note. there was nothing.

heather was right about a lot of things, but louis had to disagree with one thing. 

nothing was completely made of light, she had said. the very first time they met, when she had a few tattoos under her sleeves and a tantalizing smile and eyes greener than anything.

as tears fell down louis' cheeks, he knew that she hadn't counted herself in the world. but if she had, she would have realized that she was the very light she could never find.


End file.
